Just mix it all together and it’s ready. It’s particularly good the after a night in the refrigerator as the flavours mix together and mellow beautifully. You can also mess with the proportions – using only half the vinegar and sake makes a very thick salad cream type dressing.

25/10/2010

Macaroni Cheese is a favourite dish of many, and it seems every vegan cook has their own interpretation of it. I’ve been working on this recipe for years, based on this one on Vegancooking. I had a number of problems with the original. In particular, it was aiming to reproduce the American style of macaroni cheese, which is somewhat different from the Scottish one. Secondly, it was too damn oily whenever I made it.

The main difference is the addition of white miso replacing some of the margarine. It works wonders for the creaminess and adds a little cheesy flavour of its own, as well as cutting down on the fat content. I also use fresh garlic, dried onions and more nutritional yeast, and swapped the soy sauce with a vegan Worcestershire sauce. My method for making the roux is also slightly more proper. The quantity serves two very hungry ones, or up to 6 as a side dish. My omni partner adores this recipe and requests it frequently.

A hand blender is a very useful tool for this recipe. Not only did I blend the sauce with mine, but I used one of the other attachments to chop up the breadcrumbs.

Start to preheat the oven to 180°C. Put on a large pot of water with a dash of oil. When it’s boiling, add the macaroni and cook for 8-10 minutes, or for as long as it says on the packet.

Put half of olive oil into a medium-sized saucepan. Add the garlic and fry slowly for a minute or so. Add the flour and stir well until the flour darkens a little. Turn down the heat and add the water. Stir frantically, use a whisk or, ideally, a hand blender until smooth. Turn the heat back up and bring to the boil. The sauce will thicken considerably. Add the margarine, miso, nutritional yeast, dried onions, Worcestershire sauce, black pepper and the rest of the olive oil and blend again until smooth. Sneak a taste. If it’s not creamy enough for you, add some more margarine and blend again. Turn off the heat.

By now, the pasta should be done, so drain it and put to one side while you grease a casserole. Mix up the pasta and the sauce in the casserole. Arrange the slices of tomato on top, and spread the breadcrumbs over this. Put in the oven and bake for 15 minutes or so. Both the oven temperature and the cooking time depend on your oven.

The other was … Fried aubergine in miso except that instead of frying, I BBQ’ed the eggplant: I made sure the BBQ was hot (lowish heat), then cooked large slices (so that they didn’t fall through the grill) of eggplant brushed with a mixture of sesame & canola oil. Once they were cooled, I cut them into more bite-sized pieces before finishing them off as per the recipe. Delicious.

11/09/2008

There I was, innocently doing a puzzle in Irasutorojikku (a Japanese puzzle monthly), when I noticed a recipe printed beneath. Closer investigation revealed that it was vegan, and I proceeded to impress my partner no end by translating the important bits there and then. Tonight I had a go at making it, and it was lovely. According to the blurb, it’s a Tokyo dish.

1 very large aubergine (originally three small, or two Japanese large)
A blend of sunflower and sesame oil, for frying the aubergine.

For the sauce:
2 tbl mirin
2 tbl water
1 tbl miso (type not specified – I used a dark, evil barley miso, which worked well)

To finish:
Soy sauce to taste
sugar to taste (I used rice syrup)

Cut the aubergine into (UK) chip shapes 5cm by 6mm square (about 2″ by ¼” – yes, it was that specific). Heat up the oils in a large frying pan, add the aubergine and fry until soft. Mix the sauce ingredients and add to the pan. Cook for a couple of minutes then add the soy sauce and sugar. And that’s it.

I served it with brown rice and grilled tofu. The omnivorous one ate it really quickly and urged me to post the recipe so that I have a record of it other than my pencilled notes in the puzzle book! One day, he will add up what he’s spent on Japanese lessons for me, and then he might be less impressed.

28/09/2007

The recipe below is sort-of translated from 野菜ごはん (“Vegetable Meals”) by 月森紀子 (Noriko Tsukimori), published by Bunka last March. Ms. Tsukimori runs a macrobiotic restaurant in Tokyo, and her cookbook is entirely vegan.

Heat the sesame oil in a saucepan and add the chili pepper. When the aroma rises, take it out (if you must – I didn’t!). Add the dashi and cucumber to the pan. Mix the ingredients for A, and add to the pan. Simmer for 10 minutes until the sauce has thickened.

If it didn’t thicken nicely, drain it!

Notes:
* Japanese cucumbers are very small. I used one Western one.
* There is recipe in the book for a konbu and shiitake dashi. I just used my faithful vegan instant konbu dashi. In future, when using western cucumber, I will halve the quantity of dashi.
* The recipe uses beet sugar for sweetening. I used brown rice syrup.
* My partner thinks this recipe turns cucumber into aubergine. It would work well with aubergine or courgette instead of cucumber. It should be quite nice cold, too.
* I’d also add half the miso at the end of cooking.
* A kanji meaning “strong” is used with the sesame oil. I take this to mean a nice, flavoursome one.

Oil the grill and turn it on. Cut the pepper into chunks and, when hot, place on grill. They’ll be done in about 5 minutes. Transfer the peppers to a pan. Put a small amount of oil on the tofu and put it to grill. Grind the peppers to a pulp with a hand blender (or whatever) and mix with sake and miso. Put on a very gentle heat to warm through – do not let it boil, or the goodness of the miso will disappear.

When the tofu is done, place on plate and pour sauce over – serves two, as part of a meal which included brown rice noodles and mixed oriental mushrooms braised in sake and soy sauce, sprinkled with yuzu (citron).

The sauce is a flavour explosion, and it was amusing to see the single drip of oil in the drip tray.